✨Stop Managing Time – How to Start Living by Your Values
As a full-time university professor, I ran a multi-million-dollar research lab, taught classes, homeschooled my kids, exercised, cooked every meal from scratch, wrote online—and still slept eight hours a night.
So, it’s not surprising that I got asked all the time:
“How did you fit it all in?”
My answer is always the same.
I didn’t. Choices had to be made, and I had to stop outsourcing them.
The most overwhelmed people I know aren’t doing “too much.” They’re chasing someone else’s dream of what their life should look like.
They’re letting external voices—neighbors, social media, well-meaning parents—steer the ship instead of taking the wheel themselves.
But how do we take control?
All the time management gurus will happily sell you their planners, goal sheets, and routines. The newer ones talk about managing your energy instead of your minutes. I’m not here to tell you those things are bad—I’ll even share my own system for organizing your family’s day in a minute.
But they miss a deeper truth:
It’s not about managing time.
It’s about managing your values.
If you want to be less overwhelmed and more in control, you’ve got to live a life fully centered around your values.
Let’s start with an important truth.
You Can Do Anything, But Not Everything
You have finite energy. You can expend it trying to go everywhere (and get nowhere) or funnel your energy in the directions that matter most.
How do you decide? Start with this question.
Is it Urgent or Important?
One problem I had in my early years as a mom was mistaking things that were urgent for important. A phone call, text, news, or social media notifications are urgent — but most of them are unimportant. Most of us know this already. But the following things also feel urgent.
Making Valentine’s/Christmas/cupcakes for your kids’ class
Volunteering for all your kids’ classes and co-ops
Attending every birthday you are invited to
Cleaning the house — right this minute!
Decisions must be made on importance not urgency.
For some of you volunteering might be important. I’m not here to tell you what is and is not important to your family. I’m only telling you that by choosing to do these things are you choosing NOT to do something else. Getting clear on what’s important to YOU should define which things you spend your time on.
Because if you don’t define what’s important, urgent things will decide it for you.
Family time is one of the most important things you can do — But you can always do it tomorrow… or the day after that…
Important things won’t scream to be done, but they are the core of a life well lived.
Let Family Values Define What’s Important
Every family’s values will look a little different (that’s a beautiful thing).
Some of ours are Family, Education, and Health. Every decision I make comes down to our values.
I know it sounds easy. It’s not.
You will have to say no to things you WANT to do too. Family first for me – means I don’t do mom nights out. I don’t do in-person book clubs. We don’t meet with friends on Sundays. We don’t travel without our kids.
They’ll be time for all of that later; My kids are my everything now.
Your values might look different than mine! Hanging with your girlfriends might refresh you and give you needed rest. Writing this newsletter is like rest to me and helps me become a better homeschool mom and goes on the important list.
There are a million ways to live a good and beautiful life. Get crystal clear on your values and live them.
Aligning Your Life to Your Values Makes Everything Easier
When my babies were little, I “had it all” on paper: a career everyone envied, two beautiful children… and a constant knot of exhaustion and guilt as those children spent their days in daycare while I chased tenure.
Pulling them home to homeschool—even while still working full-time—lifted a weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying. My days were still full, but suddenly I felt whole.
Later, as my children grew and their educational needs deepened, I felt that familiar pull of misalignment again. So I made the hardest choice of all: I left the job and poured myself fully into my children and our home.
It wasn’t easy—it wasn’t just saying no to my job it was saying no to income and the life we were living then.
But I have never felt more aligned in my life. Never.
These days, I still full-time homeschool. I cook every meal. I run a science club in our living room. I write a bestselling Substack. I exercise consistently. And yes—I still sleep eight hours a night.
My days are full. Busy, even.
But I rarely feel overwhelmed anymore. It’s different now.
Living a life aligned with your values will help you manage your day but it’ll do something even more important.
It’ll help you be content in all that busy.
🌺And that, my friends, is really “having it all.”
Today’s paid bonus is one of the deepest, most significant I’ve ever created.
I walk you through a seven-step framework for managing your time by aligning your life with your family’s values. It includes questions to ask, charts to fill out, worksheets to work through, and the systems that turn good intentions into sustainable daily life. It’s based on extensive research on the topic compiled with my personal experience.
I’ll also share my own daily flows—and how they’ve shifted across seasons, from working full-time in academia to homeschooling and running our home now.
If you feel like you’re drifting in a sea of overwhelm and want a life that feels aligned, grounded, and meaningful, this is for you. ♥️